The Woman in the Dunes - Machi Abe [43]
“Well, a rubber suits us pretty well, doesn’t it?” Her small jaws and lips were covered with a thin skin, through which the blood seemed to be visible. She spoke with a certain calculated spite: “Between us it’s like buying at a department store, isn’t it? If you don’t like it, you can take it back any time. You make your mind up, looking at something wrapped up in plastic—you can look without breaking the seal. You wonder what’s inside. You wonder if you can trust it. You wonder if you won’t be sorry later if you buy the wrong thing now.”
But in her heart she was probably not satisfied with such a commercial-sample type of relationship.… He remembered the brothel smell of disinfectant as he had begun buttoning up his trousers, already feeling he was being hurried out … and the woman still naked on the bed with the towel stuck between her legs.
“But it’s all right if once in a while you feel like forcing a sale, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. Any forcing …”
“But you’re cured by now, aren’t you?”
“If you really think that, then why don’t we agree to go on without protection?”
“Come on, now. Why are you trying to get out of your responsibilities?”
“Well, didn’t I say I don’t like to force a sale?”
“It’s very strange. What have I got to do with your venereal disease, for heaven’s sake?”
“Maybe you do have something to do with it.”
“Don’t be silly!”
“Well, anyway, I withdraw the forced selling.”
“Well then, don’t you ever intend to take off your hat in your whole life?”
“I wonder why you’re so uncooperative. It would be natural for you to feel tender toward me if we slept together.”
“In other words, you’ve got a psychological veneral disease, haven’t you? By the way, maybe I’ll have to work tomorrow.”
Hmm. A psychological venereal disease, he thought, yawning. It’s a pretty clever expression for her to think up. But she would never know just how much the expression had hurt him. In the first place, venereal disease was the exact opposite of soap opera. Venereal disease was the most desperate evidence that soap opera did not exist. Venereal disease … stealthily imported by Columbus in his tiny ships into tiny harbors … spread so diligently by everyone throughout the world. All men were equal before death and venereal disease. Venereal disease … the collective responsibility of mankind. Nevertheless, she absolutely refused to admit it. She had shut herself in her own Alice in Wonderland tale where she herself played the main role. And he was left alone on this side of the mirror, suffering with his psychological venereal disease. And so his naked—hatless—member was paralyzed and useless. Her mirror made him impotent. Her woman’s innocence had turned him into an enemy.
20
HIS face was as stiff as starch, his breathing like a storm. His saliva tasted of dry scorched sugar … and such a terrible loss of energy. At least one glassful of water must have evaporated in perspiration. The woman arose sluggishly, keeping her head bent. Her sand-streaked face came to about the height of his eyes. Suddenly she blew her nose with her fingers and rubbed her hands with sand that she scooped up. Her trousers slipped down over her bending hips.
Annoyed, he turned his eyes away. Yet it was not quite right to say he was only annoyed. A strange feeling, different from dryness, lingered on the tip of his tongue. His member had been pulsating and vibrant without the rubber, although only for a short time, until he had been put off by the woman’s stupid expression. And now a lingering warmth remained in it. To call this a discovery would perhaps be exaggerating, but it was worth a moment’s attention.
He did not feel that he was particularly degenerate. But he was not at all disposed only to spiritual rape. It was like eating unsweetened tapioca. Spiritual rape meant that before he could hurt her, he would have to hurt himself. And why